Literature Quotes · Page 35

Literature is one of those realms in which giving out prizes can seem not merely dubious but positively obtuse.

— Ben Dolnick

The whole mad swirl of everything that was to come began then.

— Jack Kerouac

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others

— Virginia Woolf

I teach literature. That's easy for me. Take someone else's work and talk about it.

— Chinua Achebe

More than art, more than literature, music is universally accessible.

— Billy Joel

My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.

— Gene Wolfe

The excellence of this important contribution to genre literature CANNOT be overstated A masterwork.

— William F. Nolan

“Poetry is a tool for writers to create literature in different forms of expression and messages. ”

— Vanessa M. Chattman

I think going back to school, studying as much as you can, especially literature and close reading some of the most beautiful…

— Masiela Lusha

If your country is wiped off the map and your language is banned, if your literature has to serve a cause, it…

— Olga Tokarczuk

When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if…

— Samuel Lover

“A classical work of literature can never be completely understood. But those who are educated and educating themselves must always desire to…

— Friedrich Schlegel

[Science] is the literature of God written on the stars-the trees-the rocks-and more important because [of] its marked utilitarian character.

— James A. Garfield

Alas, two men are often necessary to provide a woman with a perfect lover, just as in literature a writer composes a…

— Honore de Balzac

The simple point is that literature belongs to the world man constructs, not to the world he sees; to his home, not…

— Northrop Frye

How very dull our lives would be without literature! How very much dark and poor, how so sad and empty the world…

— Mehmet Murat Ildan

I do believe any hero is a person that can be knocked down. A failure isn't a person who gets knocked down;…

— Sam Worthington

“When he, whoever of the gods it was, had thus arranged in order and resolved that chaotic mass, and reduced it, thus…

— Ovid

Writing in African languages became a topic of discussion in conferences, in schools, in classrooms; the issue is always being raised -…

— Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Editors can be stupid at times. They just ignore that author's intention. I always try to read unabridged editions, so much is…

— Anonymous

“Though it's true that (dictionary-maker Samuel) Johnson sometimes seem to feel that the language was in decline, he didn't rail against it…

— Robert Lane Greene

“Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people…

— George Saunders

It's been suggested that most women fail to write significantly because the female mind is viscerotonic, and occupied almost exclusively with the…

— Alfred Bester

Is it strange, then, that in a literature so concerned with realism and with personal liberation this refusal and impoverishment of the…

— Alfred Kazin

At one point in my life, I wanted to do a master's degree in Irish literature, but I ended up getting pregnant…

— Miriam Toews

In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.

— William James

Any literature, when it arrives at being good literature, transcends genre.

— Vanna Bonta

In French literature, you can choose a la carte; in Spanish literature, there is only the set meal.

— Jose Bergamin

“I regained my soul through literature after those times I'd lost it to wild-eyed gypsy girls on the European streets.”

— Roman Payne

There are ten men in me and I do not know or understand one of them.

— Carl Sandburg

Love is like a spice. It can sweeten your life - however, it can spoil it, too.

— Confucius

Literature is about being a complex, contradictory human being.

— Julia Alvarez

“It's true that a picture is worth a thousand words, but it's also true that a word is worth a thousand pictures.”

— Marty Johncox

Learning and literature have a way of outlasting the civilization that made them.

— Dorothy L. Sayers

The social scene at the Harvard I knew was outside the rules of literature. It was less poignant.

— Lisa Brennan-Jobs

“Camp fires, like red, peculiar blossoms, dotted the night.”

— Stephen Crane

All good American literature is always interested in people who are ambiguously heroic, like Gatsby.

— John Green

“Literature is my Utopia...No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends”

— Helen Keller

“Use the wings of the flying Universe, Dream with open eyes; See in darkness.”

— Dejan Stojanovic

My two sons speak Hebrew, and are familiar with the scriptures and with rabbinic literature. This is the way we live.

— Herman Wouk